Danish champion of environmental protection travelled first class around the world

Monday, 14 October 2013
A storm is brewing around the former Danish prime minister, the Venstre
or Liberal Party leader, Lars Løkke Rasmussen. As chairman of the
Danish partially state funded environmental organization, Global Green
Growth Institute (GGGI), he has flown around the world on the most
expensive flight tickets possible.

In an open letter to members of his party, Venstre, over the weekend,
Løkke Rasmussen regrets that has not been effective in trying to change
the generous travel rules - which was in operation before he took post
- but promises that henceforth he should settle for business class
instead of first class.

Danish media sources report that Løkke Rasmussen used the equivalent of
more than Dkr900,000 on 15 flights, though he has not yet officially
published how much he spent on the fights. GGGI is championing Green
issues, promoting green growth in poor countries around the world.Lars Løkke Rasmussen, former Danish premier / Granscole
The opposition parties says that the apology is not enough. “Lars Løkke
Rasmussen's letter is not good enough,” says both the Danish People's
Party and Social Democrats.

Pernielle Rosenkrantz-Theil's climate spokesman for the Socialists: “He
portrays it as if that this organization is a super tanker to be turned
around. But the only thing that should change behaviour, is himself.

Several of the parties want to see the bills. The Socialists want that
Lars Løkke publish his bills, so one can see exactly what money was
spent on the trips. Løkke’s Danish People's Party, via its development
spokesman, Hans Kristian Skibby said “The best, Lars Løkke can do in
this case is that there should be a disclosure of the documents.”

Others such as the Red Green Alliance, Enhedslisten’s foreign affairs
spokesman, Christian Juhl believe that Lars Løkke should pay the money
back: “If Lars Løkke stand by that he has had a huge overuse, it will
do well to him that he voluntarily pay back the money. The money will
be allocated for development assistance to poor people in the Third
World.”

In a poll conducted by pooling organisation, Voxmeter published on
Monday show that Venstre has fallen from 30.1 to 28.4 per cent just in
the last week. It's Venstre absolute low point since the parliamentary
election of 2011.
By Scancomark.com Team